"Eyewitnesses reported seeing the beer truck speeding along Drottninggatan (Queen Street) before it crashed into the front of a department store. The company that owned it said it had been hijacked as it made a delivery nearby."
Drottninggatan (Queen Street):
"Drottning gatan: Drottning got it: Drottning - The Queen, your hypothesis of the "Gang of Four" is correct, you've got it to the 10, and you've got all the information that you asked for..."
M.N.: Well, good to hear the confirmation. I do have the feeling, and even intuitively know that you did send it. Thank you very much, this is greatly appreciated. I do think that this will mark a turn to the better for everyone.
Zis all is between us, "the royals", how to treat better the "royal pain" in our "royal caztlez"; the gender roles assignments are not that important, it's "all in the family", on a "king-size bed"...
Habib Jlassi stockholm: "Ha, blya, ibal! - J(ew) with Lasso" / Hubbub Jealousy... /
M.N.
P.S.: PleaZe, diZregard all of the ibav aZ my very schiZ-z-z-ophrenic fanta-Zy. We, the drottningZ - RuZZianZ with no life, do Zis ZometimeZ. Eeee!
See also:
Stockholm terror attack: "Stock-holm - Ah-lens": Truck Drives Into Crowd and Department Store in Stockholm
"Trump Was Right to Strike Syria. The crucial question is what comes next." - by Nick Kristof - NYT
'He put his foot on the gas'
(M.N.: Whatever Zis meanZ-z-z...)
The attack happened just before 3 p.m. local time. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the beer truck speeding along Drottninggatan before it crashed into the front of a department store. The company that owned it said it had been hijacked as it made a delivery nearby.
...
According to eyewitness Veronica Durango, the driver "put his foot on the gas and ran through the crowd.""He came from Olof Palmes Street and drove down to Drottninggatan," Durango told CNN in a phone interview.
-
Stockholm (CNN)A man arrested on suspicion of terrorism offenses after the Stockholm truck attack is from the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan and was known to intelligence services, Swedish authorities said.
Suspicions about the arrested man have strengthened during the course of the investigation, Dan Eliasson [Da, N - El Liaison! Lie, ah-son!], chief of the Swedish Police told reporters Saturday.
Sweden truck attack: What happened
Sweden truck attack: What happened 01:07
Police are investigating a "technical device" found in the vehicle used in the attack, he said.
"We confirm that we have found a device in the truck that doesn't belong there. We are now investigating its content," Eliasson said.
Prosecutor Hans Ihrman said the arrested man was a 39-year-old from Uzbekistan.
-
M.N.: Me zinks zats nuff, prit-t-ty mutz nuff, nuff, nuff for intiplitaizinz, zan - zanny - zonny, eh-ah!
Zee al-lzo: Ztockholm Zyndrome
___________________________________
Stockholm attack: Man held on suspicion of terrorism
CNN-2 hours ago
Stockholm (CNN) A man arrested on suspicion of terrorism offenses after .... Habib Jlassi, a 29-year-old night bus driver who was there with his ...
Least four people dead and injured a dozen more
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Undetonated explosives were reported to have been found inside the stolen truck, which was driven at high speed down a busy shopping street before crashing into a department store.
The attack Friday in the heart of Sweden's capital killed four people and injured about 15 more. Ten of the injured -- nine adults and one child -- are still being treated in three different hospitals in the city, the Stockholm County Council said Saturday. Four of the adults have serious injuries.
Police arrested a man north of Stockholm later Friday. "It is likely that it is the driver of the van that has been arrested," police spokesman Mats Eriksson told CNN. "This however does not exclude the possibility of there being more arrests that will follow."
A bag of undetonated explosives was found inside the truck, which was stolen minutes before the attack as it made a delivery at a restaurant, Sweden's public broadcaster SVT reported Saturday.
The explosives, in the form of a homemade bomb, did not properly detonate, SVT reported, citing multiple police sources. The attacker apparently suffered burns caused by the explosives, SVT said.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Police officers secure the area outside the Stockholm Central train station. Parliament and the Stockholm subway were placed in lockdown.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
An injured person is loaded into an ambulance.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A police officer stands guard near the scene of the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
People react at the scene of the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Local media reported that the truck was hijacked as it made a delivery nearby. Eyewitnesses reported it being driven at speed along Drottninggatan (Queen Street) before it crashed into the front of a department store.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Security services launched an investigation into whether more than one people were involved in carrying out the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A man lays flowers Saturday by a cordon securing the scene of the truck attack in Stockholm.
Russian people with no life
Rooooney is a drot
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Read the whole story
· · · ·
The attack Friday in the heart of Sweden's capital left at least four people dead and injured a dozen more.
Nine of the injured -- eight adults and one child -- are still being treated in three different hospitals in the city, the Stockholm County Council said Saturday.
"It is likely that it is the driver of the van that has been arrested," police spokesman Mats Eriksson told CNN. "This however does not exclude the possibility of there being more arrests that will follow."
A bag of undetonated explosives was found inside the stolen truck, Sweden's public broadcaster SVT reported Saturday, citing multiple police sources.
The explosives were in the form of a homemade bomb in a bag, SVT reported but did not properly detonate. The attacker apparently suffered burns of some kind caused by the explosives, SVT said.
Asked for confirmation by CNN, Eriksson said he was unaware of any information about explosives found in the stolen truck.
The prosecutor has until noon Tuesday to ask the court to detain the suspect, said Karin Rosander, spokeswoman for Sweden's prosecutor's office.
The Swedish Security Service said the attack happened just before 3 p.m. local time. People were seen fleeing the area in panic after what appeared to be the latest use of a vehicle as a weapon of terror in Europe.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing the beer truck speeding along Drottninggatan (Queen Street) before it crashed into the front of a department store. The company that owned it said it had been hijacked as it made a delivery nearby.
'We are not afraid'
The street remained cordoned off Saturday morning, but the truck had been removed overnight from the building where it was wedged. Heavily armed officers guarded the area and several police vans were present.
Flowers had been left by the cordon, and police consoled a crying man as he walked up with a bouquet.
Sweden's Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin and Education Minister Gustaf Fridolin paid tribute to the victims of the attack as they too left flowers at the scene.
"This is unfortunately something we are seeing in many countries in the world, but we have to stand up for our open society," Lovin told reporters.
"I feel great pain for those family members who have received the worst message possible. This is my city, and it feels unreal that this has happened," she said. "We must do everything in our power to make sure this doesn't happen again."
Several fathers brought their children down to the barrier and explained gently what happened.
Habib Jlassi, a 29-year-old night bus driver who was there with his three-year-old daughter, told CNN it was important to come down to offer his blessings and pay tribute to those who lost their lives.
"I've come here to show that we are not afraid," said Jlassi, who lives in Stockholm and whose eyes looked red from crying. "We are stronger than them."
Around the corner, in a square outside Stockholm Concert Hall, a flower, fruit and vegetable market was being set up, as it would on any Saturday. Some people bought flowers there before walking over to leave them by the cordon.
Debris still littered the ground around the crash scene and workers in neon suits carried items to a waiting skip.
Suspect photo released
Police said Friday that the man taken into custody matched the description of a person of interest whose photo authorities had released earlier.
Police say they want to speak to this man about the attack.
"Sweden has been attacked," Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters. "Everything indicates this is a terror attack."
Lofven said the government was doing everything possible to help the security services. "We are thinking about the victims -- their families and friends -- and those who were injured," he said.
The Prime Minister returned to the capital from the west of the country, his spokesman Erik Nises told CNN.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Police officers secure the area outside the Stockholm Central train station. Parliament and the Stockholm subway were placed in lockdown.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
An injured person is loaded into an ambulance.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A police officer stands guard near the scene of the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
People react at the scene of the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Local media reported that the truck was hijacked as it made a delivery nearby. Eyewitnesses reported it being driven at speed along Drottninggatan (Queen Street) before it crashed into the front of a department store.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Security services launched an investigation into whether more than one people were involved in carrying out the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A man lays flowers Saturday by a cordon securing the scene of the truck attack in Stockholm.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Emergency services work at the scene in Stockholm, Sweden, where a truck was driven into pedestrians on Friday, April 7. "Everything indicates this is a terror attack," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A medical responder moves through the scene of the attack. Stockholm police made an arrest in connection with the incident, police spokesman Lars Bystrom told CNN. No other details were immediately available.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Police respond to the scene of the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A couple embrace after the incident.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
People check on an injured person.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Police officers secure the area outside the Stockholm Central train station. Parliament and the Stockholm subway were placed in lockdown.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
An injured person is loaded into an ambulance.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A police officer stands guard near the scene of the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
People react at the scene of the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Local media reported that the truck was hijacked as it made a delivery nearby. Eyewitnesses reported it being driven at speed along Drottninggatan (Queen Street) before it crashed into the front of a department store.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Security services launched an investigation into whether more than one people were involved in carrying out the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A man lays flowers Saturday by a cordon securing the scene of the truck attack in Stockholm.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Emergency services work at the scene in Stockholm, Sweden, where a truck was driven into pedestrians on Friday, April 7. "Everything indicates this is a terror attack," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A medical responder moves through the scene of the attack. Stockholm police made an arrest in connection with the incident, police spokesman Lars Bystrom told CNN. No other details were immediately available.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
Police respond to the scene of the attack.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
A couple embrace after the incident.
Truck rams pedestrians in Swedish capital
People check on an injured person.
"We will always do everything we can to protect Sweden, but we can't guarantee that it won't happen again," Lofven told reporters later Friday.
"If this is a terrorist attack, terrorists ... want us to not live our lives normally," he said. "But that is what we are going to do. So terrorists can never defeat Sweden. Never."
King Carl XVI Gustaf announced he had cut short his state visit to Brazil to return home immediately in the aftermath of the attack.
'He put his foot on the gas'
According to eyewitness Veronica Durango, the driver "put his foot on the gas and ran through the crowd."
"He came from Olof Palmes Street and drove down to Drottninggatan," Durango told CNN in a phone interview.
"It was like he was driving through paper. It's like it was nothing. I can't even believe how a person could do such a thing. And then he just kept on going. I was in shock."
Vehicle attacks
The attack in Stockholm joins a growing pattern of vehicles being used to launch attacks on pedestrians.
CNN's Lauren Said-Moorhouse and journalist Per Nyberg reported from Stockholm, while CNN's Laura Smith-Spark wrote from London. CNN's Mariano Castillo contributed to this report.
Read the whole story
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President Trump’s air strikes against Syria were of dubious legality. They were hypocritical. They were impulsive. They may have had political motivations. They create new risks for the United States.
But most of all, they were right.
I’m deeply suspicious of Trump’s policies and competence, but this is a case where he is right and Barack Obama was wrong. Indeed, many of us believe that Obama’s worst foreign policy mistake was his passivity in Syria.
One of Trump’s problems is that he has lied so much and so often that he doesn’t have credibility at home or abroad in a foreign crisis like this. I likewise find it unnerving that he came to the right decision in an impulsive way, changing policy 180 degrees after compelling photos emerged of children gassed in Syria. Should a president’s decisions about war really depend on the photos taken?
Yet for all my distrust of Trump’s motivations and capacity to execute a strategy, here’s why I believe he was right.
Since the horrors of mustard gas during World War I a century ago, one of the world’s more successful international norms has been a taboo on the use of chemical weapons. We all have an interest in reinforcing that norm, so this is not just about Syria but also about deterring the next dictator from turning to sarin.
For an overstretched military, poison gas is a convenient way to terrify and subdue a population. That’s why Saddam Hussein used gas on Kurds in 1988, and why Bashar al-Assad has used gas against his own people in Syria. The best way for the world to change the calculus is to show that use of chemical weapons carries a special price — such as a military strike on an airbase.
Paradoxically, Assad may have used chemical weapons because he perceived a green light from the Trump administration. In recent days, Rex Tillerson, Sean Spicer and Nikki Haley all suggested that it was no longer American policy to push for the removal of Assad, and that may have emboldened him to open the chemical weapons toolbox. That mistake made it doubly important for Trump to show that neither Assad nor any leader can get away with using weapons of mass destruction.
Look, for a Syrian child, it doesn’t matter much whether death comes from a barrel bomb, a mortar shell, a bullet, or a nerve agent. I hope Trump will also show more interest in stopping all slaughter of Syrians — but it’s still important to defend the norm against chemical weapons (the United States undermined that norm after Saddam’s gas attack by falsely suggesting that Iran was to blame).
Critics note that Trump’s air strikes don’t have clear legal grounding. They’re right, and that was one reason Obama didn’t act. But Bill Clinton’s 1999 intervention to prevent genocide in Kosovo was also of uncertain legality, and thank God for it. Clinton has said that his greatest foreign policy mistake was not intervening in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide; any such intervention also would have been of unclear legality — and the right thing to do.
There are risks ahead, of Russia or Syria targeting American aircraft or of Iran seeking revenge against Americans in Iraq. War plans rarely survive the first shot, and military interventions are easier to begin than to end. But as long as we don’t seek to topple Assad militarily, everybody has an interest in avoiding an escalation.
It’s also fair for critics to highlight Trump’s hypocrisy, and raise concerns that he may have fired missiles for political reasons, to show himself as a leader and distract from political problems. Certainly Trump previously objected to what he is now doing.
Referring to Obama in 2013, he tweeted: “The president must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria.” And when Trump speaks about the suffering of Syria’s “beautiful little babies,” one wonders how he justifies vilifying and barring those same babies with his travel ban. Yet I’d rather Trump inconsistently do the right thing than consistently do the wrong thing.
Many of my fellow progressives viscerally oppose any use of force, but I think that’s a mistake. I was against the Iraq war, but some military interventions save lives. The no fly zone over northern Iraq in the 1990s is one example, and so are the British intervention in Sierra Leone and French intervention in Mali. It’s prudent to be suspicious of military interventions, but imprudent to reject any use of force categorically.
Want proof that military interventions in the Middle East can work? In 2014, Obama ordered air strikes near the Syria-Iraq border against ISIS as it was attacking members of the Yazidi minority. Those U.S. strikes saved many thousands of Yazidi lives, although they came too late to save thousands more who were killed or kidnapped as sex slaves.
In Syria, the crucial question is what comes next.
There’s some bold talk among politicians about ousting Assad from Syria. Really? People have been counting on Assad’s fall for six years now, and he’s as entrenched as ever.
Moreover, air strips can be rebuilt, and if this was a one-time strike then the larger slaughter in Syria will continue indefinitely. But I’m hoping that the administration may use it as a tool to push for a ceasefire.
As Secretary of State, John Kerry worked valiantly for a peace deal in Syria. But he had neither carrots nor sticks to offer. Kerry pleaded with Obama for leverage in the form of military strikes, but Obama refused.
Now the State Department finally has leverage. But, tragically, we seem to lack a Secretary of State with the clout and inclination to seize that leverage and push for a peace deal.
My proposed course in Syria is the same one that Hillary Clinton and many others have favored: missile strikes to ground Assad’s small air force. This should help end the barrel bombs and make Assad realize that he has no military solution, and that it’s time for negotiation. The most plausible negotiated outcome would be a long-term ceasefire and de facto partition of Syria, putting off reintegration until Assad is no longer around.
Even if we can’t leverage military strikes into a peace deal, the strikes are still worthwhile by degrading the air assets that Assad uses to kill his own people.
Syria is a spectacular country redolent with history, and inhabited by a normally warm and hospitable people. Yet Obama’s well-meant caution has allowed Syria’s downward spiral to turn it into a symbol of brutality and suffering that has also aggravated the Sunni-Shia schism all over the world.
Because there was no good option on any given day, we always chose to do little or nothing. The result was that more than 300,000 people were killed, vast numbers were tortured and raped, almost five million refugees fled Syria and destabilized other countries, ISIS sowed terrorism worldwide, and genocides unfolded against the Yazidi and Christian communities in Syria and Iraq.
For all the legitimate concerns about the risks ahead, now again we just might have a window to curb the bloodshed in Syria. I’m glad Trump took the important first step of holding Assad accountable for using chemical weapons. But it’s all going to depend now on whether Trump, who so far has been a master of incompetence, can manage the far more difficult challenge of using war to midwife peace.
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